Dry Bones in the Valley: A Novel

by Tom Bouman

  I nodded. His voice sounded distant; he was probably in shock and I knew I could arrest him if the world weren’t diagonal and trying to slide back into place. He produced a bottle of top-shelf vodka—no doubt liberated from someone’s lake cabin—from beneath his cot, pulled on it, and shook it in my direction. “You need to visit the doctor’s office?” I declined. He splashed some of the liquor on the small wound in his shoulder, diluting the stream of blood into a wash that coated his chest. Then he felt for the .22 slug where it rested between bone and skin, and popped it out the same way it went in, tossing it in a dark corner when he was done. Pressing a rag soaked with alcohol to the wound, he gave me a look of quiet accusation. All he said was, “You going out for turkey this spring?”

  “Is that what you’re asking me?”

  “Farrell, I’m sorry about George. Like I said: Danny’s not the one. Chasing him all over the county would waste your time. You know that.”

  “It looks bad.”

  He smiled. “That’s right. Everything we do looks bad.” Alan flipped open the door of the stove, broke a few dry branches in half, and placed them inside. “Leave Danny. You won’t find him unless he wants to be found, and he ain’t the one anyway. I know, those two scrapped. When did you ever fight someone who didn’t matter to you? I don’t guess you ever did.”

  I considered explaining to Alan that the only things worth fighting over were things you couldn’t have or couldn’t help. Everyone comes to know that at some point in his life. Some people know it all their lives. And I’ll bet that those who know, but don’t know that they know, make the killers of this world.

  When the kindling caught, Alan swung the stove door shut and said, “Not to change the subject, but who did that fellow up on the ridge?”

  “Pardon?”

  Alan nodded. “That boy’s been up there since January at the least. Seen sign of him months back.”

  “And said nothing?”

  “And said nothing about none of my concern.”

  “Who else knew?”

  “That’s the question. The answer is, I couldn’t say. Reach up behind you and open that window, would you, Henry?”

  To do so I had to turn my back. I told myself he’d have found a way to shoot me already. Smoke curled out of the window in a gauzy sheet, and the heavy night silence joined us, mixing with the sighs of the woodstove and the medicinal stink of vodka. Not far to the southwest, I heard a motor kick off, sounded like a dirt bike or a four-wheeler. It revved three times even, then three times again, and pulled away. Over the hill and gone.

  “Okay,” said Alan. “Talk’s over.”

  We limped along toward where the causey met the island; in an unspoken agreement, neither of us trained his weapon on the other. When we reached the waterside, I said, “Going to need my shotgun back.”

  He swung his .243 to waist height and, without exactly pointing it at me, said, “I only mean to be helpful. I’m sure you see that. Please don’t press your luck.”

  “Well. Thanks for all your help,” I said. He backed away, turned, and headed for the darkness at a trot; by the time I’d made my fingers close around the Maglite, he had disappeared. It took a few minutes rooting around in the pine needles to locate the shotgun. I turned to find his lantern snuffed out and the island gone silent.

  I DROVE THE dirt roads for hours, looking for light in the trees. Met a total of three cars, two of which I waylaid by flashing my brights. One contained a rueful man who expected me to DUI him. He promised me he lived just half a mile away, and I let him go with a warning. Another car contained a teenage couple. The third was Trooper Zukowski doing the same thing I was. We leaned out our windows and talked awhile, not mentioning George except when we parted and he said, “We’ll get that shitbag,” meaning Danny, I supposed. I kept my hands down so he wouldn’t see them shake. We each pressed on. It got late and I knew I wouldn’t pry anything out of the houses or the places I passed. By the time I got home it was after three and I was too tired to eat, just pulled off my boots and set my .40 on the table. Took it apart, cleaned it, and left it to air on the thinnest of my three towels. I held an ice pack to my head and got down my bottle of single-malt from atop the fridge, a present from Ed and Liz. I poured myself an inch and sat. Forgot to splash some water in, so all I tasted was burn.

  Even in the farmhouse with the windows closed, you could hear the drilling a few ridges over. I stepped out into the yard, not bothering with my shoes, and looked up at the clear sky with the wash of stars disappearing into the flickering purple to the southwest. I knew I wouldn’t sleep and likely shouldn’t with my head the way it was. Went back inside, got out my fiddle, and rosined the bow.

  I read where the jazz pianist Thelonious Monk used to spin around in circles while he waited for the band to get the tempo just like he wanted it. Sometimes he’d spin for minutes. The man who taught me fiddle had a different approach to the same end. John Allen was his name, an oldster who’d walk or bicycle over to my parents’ house on Wednesday evenings to give me lessons. One of the first things I had to learn was that fiddling wasn’t all sawing back and forth with the bow, it was patterns, you know, down-up-up-down-up-down-up-up-down-up and so on. You fit the tune to the bowing pattern. Because I was nine and it took me a while to build the patience for this, at John’s insistence we’d often spend even ten minutes at a stretch just down-up-up-down-upping in a particular key, until John could recognize that neither of us was thinking about it anymore but just doing it and all of a sudden he’d call, “Red Haired Boy!” or “Edward in the Treetop!” and we’d be off.

  Another thing I learned from John Allen, when I got halfway better at the fiddle, was the virtue of slowness. There were times when, justifiably proud at having practiced that week, I wanted to whip through a tune, to show off. If I did get out of hand, John would set his fiddle on his knee and smile and say, “Too fast for me! Can’t keep up.” Which you knew wasn’t true, just a nice way of saying slow down and let the tune work through you, not vice versa.

  Down-up-up-down-up-down-up-up. You get the pattern and the rhythm right and then wait for the tune. I needed something I could rip into. “Bonaparte’s Retreat” found me. Most versions you hear give you whiplash, even the older ones. It’s best slow. I’d heard that it’s not as triumphant a tune as you’d expect, but originated with Irish soldiers hired by Napoleon, heading home in defeat. In the case of that tune, slowing it down is the only way something so familiar can still live and breathe. It was always a good one with Polly on the bodhran, she always had steady rhythm but indifferent pitch.

  By the time I got to the modified part B Copland had made so famous, I had to stop and breathe. I thought of George Ellis. Got a piece of paper and curled it into a funnel, poured the rest of my whiskey back into the bottle, and went to bed, but never to sleep.

  IT’S NOT hard to get up if you never go down. Dawn brought a hint that the weather might get clearer. With enough pain pills, my head would too. The eastern sky was bright as a wild rose as I walked stiff-backed from my woodpile with an armload for the stove. The snow had melted, and my boots left prints on a field that, newly bared, crackled underfoot and shimmered silver; it was a beauty that would not last another ten minutes, so I dropped the firewood and stood and watched the night’s frost dissolve into morning mist. Somewhere in the tree line, a bluebird burbled a tune, but I couldn’t pick him out. It was the first songbird I’d heard that spring, other than the wisecracking redwing blackbirds, and the chickadees who never leave. Before long the wheezy timing belt in Ed Brennan’s pickup joined the choir. The truck jounced along my driveway and backed up next to the tumbledown shed referred to as the “Big Garage.” There is no Little Garage, far as I know.

  My place belonged to Ed Brennan’s Aunt Medbh, who died. The farmhouse stood snug against a gentle slope of a hill, with a view down a wooded valley patched with yellow fields. It was once a small dairy farm, as the slumping post-and-beam barns and a milk house attest
. Barbed wire, vanishing into the earth in spots, marked the border of the thirty-acre plot. Ed had bought it from his cousins following Aunt Medbh’s death of old age. When natural gas arrived to the area, his cousins kindly offered to buy the place back, but Ed had plans to improve the farm and preserve it all in one swoop. He doesn’t love the idea of hydrofracking, Ed, and will sign no leases. I live there rent-free with the understanding that I’ll help improve the place to his specifications, and will also have right of first refusal when I can get the money together, provided I agree never to allow drilling once I own it. Until that day, Ed pretends the house already belongs to me. I’m of two minds, surrounded as I am by landowners who have already signed. My misgivings won’t keep gas away any more than Ed’s will.

  I gathered my firewood and walked back inside, dropping it by the stove in the living room, then went out to help Ed with whatever he was doing. In the truck’s bed were about thirty rough-cut boards. Ed was in the shed, setting risers for the lumber. By way of greeting he called out to me, “I don’t know anymore.”

  “I don’t know anymore.” This covered a lot for us.

  Exhaling a long plume of marijuana smoke, he held out a one-hitter to me. “Safety meeting?”

  I declined, and sprang the ratchet on the nearest strap holding the load down. The lumber’s grain swirled orange and yellow. “This cherry?”

  “Milled it myself. Tree fell across the road out in Midhollow and I got there first.” Ed reached into the pickup’s bed, lifted a board, and examined it. “How about a new kitchen floor?”

  You could see even at that early stage how the lumber would make a handsome floor, a braiding grain that would deepen to red over years in the sun. “Beautiful,” I said, and popped the other ratchet.

  Ed waved me away. “I don’t need help. You got work. Go.”

  I was more tired than I knew. Suddenly the thought of being alone with everything was too much; I fell to my knees and sobbed as I had not done for years.

  “Jesus,” he said, and patted my shoulder for a while as I heaved and tried to catch my breath. “Come on, now.” When I slowed down, he said, “Up. Up’s a daisy, Officer,” and pulled me to my feet. The world spun a couple times.

  I dragged my sleeve across my eyes. “George Ellis was killed last night, shot. I shouldn’t be telling you.”

  Ed’s face hardened. “What?”

  “Shit.” I shook my head. “Please keep it to yourself, will you? You can’t even tell Liz, not yet.”

  “But who?”

  I didn’t answer. It wasn’t only George upsetting me; I’d shot a man. He was fine, and I was justified, but still. My head was out-of-round and I was exhausted. Ed drew me in—he hugged frequently and all his hugs were bearlike—and told me he’d help however he could. He wiped his own eyes with a canvas glove and returned to his task. We stacked the lumber neatly in the garage, laid a couple of sheets of steel roofing on top, and weighed them down with heavy rocks that had fallen loose from the foundation. When we were done, he straightened and blew a long, contemplative breath out. “You’ll need company. I know you don’t think you do.” He opened the door to his truck and put a foot in. “You all right?”

  “Just tired. Keep it to yourself?”

  Ed drove away. I stepped inside and sat at my kitchen table where the view down the valley was best. While my fresh mug of coffee got cold, I just kept looking down at the kitchen’s narrow uneven floorboards, painted periwinkle, and dotted with white from when someone repainted the ceiling years back. I decided to use them whenever we tore them up, make a table or maybe a bench for outside. I drained my coffee, slapped my face, got dressed, and drove to the courthouse.

  The Holebrook County Courthouse sits atop the high end of Court Street overlooking Fitzmorris’s downtown business district. Dollar store, consignment, a late-run movie theater, two bars, two restaurants, and a sandwich shop. Carly Dunigan’s bookstore is around the corner somewhere. Many of the other businesses have moved out toward Route 488, where they can spread out and build themselves new boxes to be in, or they have been replaced by chains.

  The courthouse is a dependable structure, with pillars, a cupola turned green, and a working clock. It was built in the 1850s. The sheriff’s department and holding cells are on the basement floor, along with Wy Brophy’s office and the tiny county morgue. In an all-purpose chamber whose high windows look out on budding trees in the adjacent square—the kind of government room where corrective driving courses are given, and juries deliberate small-time fates—the coroner and lawmen had gathered, along with District Attorney Ross and Wild Thyme Township Supervisor Steve Milgraham. There was a sour smell of coffee. We took seats around a scratched oak table. At the center of the table were several evidence bags, large and small; I took note of the bloody blue shirt found in Aub’s corncrib, a misshapen bullet which I assumed had taken George’s life, and other sundries. A whiteboard stood at the front of the room, clean. Dally stood and drew a black line down the center of the board, writing John Doe at the top of one half, and George Ellis on the other.

  The sheriff cleared his throat. “Last night was as bad as it gets. George was a good policeman. Let there be no doubt: we’ll hit back harder than anyone ever thought of. Every one of us in this room is here to . . . to do so.” He glanced at me.

  The sheriff continued. “But we can’t spread too thin yet. We’ve got not one homicide, but two, and not quite enough men for one. Anybody remember John Doe?” He tapped the board with a marker. “We know how George died. But I’m afraid this JD puts us out of our depth. So, let’s stay on his side of the board until we can touch bottom.”

  I was sure the line between those two deaths would fade before this was over. The extent of its blurring was the question that interested me; in that border zone down the center of the board, I hoped there would be truth enough to fashion meaning.

  Deputy Jackson let out a mighty yawn and looked around, eyes wet, to see if it was noticed; he hadn’t slept; no one had, except Milgraham and the DA. I caught the deputy’s yawn and pushed it shivering out my nose.

  Wy Brophy cleared his throat and opened a manila folder. “Guess I’ll start.” He passed around some photos of the body, his octagonal glasses perched on the very tip of his nose. “The guy had been out there a month or two at least. Absence of insect life in the body means, A, he was packed in the snow pretty well, B, it was a cold winter and he never thawed, or C, both. You’ll note that he’d been wedged under that boulder facedown. The lividity on his back suggests he’d been lying dorsal for some time before winding up that way. On his back, then, not on his stomach, is how he started out dead.” He handed another photo around, a close-up of the corpse’s chest and the wound. “See here, this speckling like cinnamon in a semicircle pattern, this is a powder burn. He was shot, most likely at a distance of twenty feet or less. More burn than I usually see. And”—Wy produced a red plastic baggie—“I found this. A lead ball that bounced up into his neck, right snug against his jugular.” It looked like a .50-cal lead ball to me, slightly flattened by its journey through the body. “Making the likely murder weapon, what?”

  “Jesus,” said Jackson, coming awake.

  “A muzzle-loading musket,” I said. “Most likely a flintlock.” In the seventies, flintlocks came back in fashion. Hunting with a flintlock was a celebration of frontier life long gone, a way to stand apart from the modern world. The brief season between Christmas and New Year’s allowed you to add a doe to your freezer if you couldn’t get a buck in the fall. That is, if your ass didn’t fall off from the cold and if your musket actually shot when you pulled the trigger. Some of the firearms were handed down, some bought new, some converted from replicas. More hunters own them than use them.

  “Are you sure?” Milgraham said. “Hoo.”

  “Someone tried to dig it out. Probably couldn’t find it and gave up trying.” Brophy passed the baggie to Deputy Jackson. “It’s got something on it, could be human fat. It felt greas
y. A musket, I’ll bet that’s right.”

  “Aw, shit,” said Dally.

  I said, “A lot of hunters have one in their locker. Season’s in late December.” Deputy Jackson handed the baggie to me and I hefted it between thumb and finger.

  Detective Palmer grunted respectfully. “Farrell’s probably right. Tough shit for us, though: no rifling in the barrel, no ballistics.”

  “And it’s probably not registered anywhere,” I said.

  “Maker’s mark on the ball, anything?” said the sheriff.

  Palmer held the musket ball in a pair of tongs and peered at it. “Looks homemade.”

  Dally turned to me. “Anybody even know anyone who uses these things?”

  “I probably do,” I said. “And we can check who bought a tag for this past season. Let me look into it.” That would pick up a few owners in the area for sure, but still I guessed that would only account for a quarter of them, if that.

  “I’ll have Krista contact the commonwealth.” Dally made notes on the board.

  Brophy picked up where he had left off. “His missing fingers and teeth and the . . . other wounds, and absence of any visible spatter at the site of discovery, suggest he didn’t die up on the ridge. He was killed elsewhere, prepared, and brought there.”

  Dally and Palmer nodded at this. Dally asked, “The fingers: that’s not a defensive wound?”

  “No, Sheriff.” Brophy raised a hand against an imaginary blade. “Imagine that.” He then drew his other hand across the fingertips. “No, the cuts are too regular. The fingertips were probably lopped off after the fact. Very soon after.” There was the briefest pause where we all imagined this happening. “Anyway, the rectum was inconclusive, nothing in the pubics. No nonmatching hairs, no nothing on the body but some blue fibers in the shoulder wound and in the waistband of his jeans that almost certainly match that shirt you found.” He turned to Detective Palmer. “I take it this case won’t be made on DNA, even if quality material were available.”